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Microsoft gives us a taste of Windows Phone “Mango”

Microsoft has officially revealed many—but not all—of the features coming to …

After showing off many of the developer features at April's MIX event, today Microsoft for the first time showed off what the next version of Windows Phone, codenamed "Mango," will offer the platform's users. Or at least, some of what it would offer; with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer boasting of "500 new features" in the new operating system, there apparently wasn't time to show off everything that would be coming to Microsoft's phone platform.

Communications

Unified messaging

Today, Microsoft's focus was on three main areas: communication, applications, and Web connectivity. Confirming previous leaks, the company showed off unified messaging—the phone can seamlessly switch between SMS, Live Messenger, and Facebook chat. As announced last week, threaded e-mail is found in the new operating system, as is a unified inbox facility. This allows selective unification of inboxes; for example, you can unify your personal Hotmail and Gmail accounts while leaving your work inbox separate.

Also as leaked, contacts will be groupable, with options for group messaging. Each group is shown using live tiles similar to those found on the phone's home screen, affording at-a-glance access to everything that's going on within a group.

Contact groups

The presence of visual voicemail was confirmed, though not demonstrated.

Communication today makes use of more than just phones and e-mail; social networking is essential for many users. Windows Phone already has deep integration with Facebook. Mango extends this integration to include Twitter, as previously announced, and LinkedIn status updates. New face recognition capabilities allow easy tagging of Facebook friends.

Speech-to-text support was confirmed, extending the existing voice control to include support for message dictation. Not previously known, but shown today, was support for text-to-speech; receive a text message while using a hands-free kit in your car, and you can tell the phone to read you the text message, so you never have to take your eyes off the road.

Applications

On the application front, Microsoft essentially reiterated the features shown at MIX. Mango includes limited multitasking support; background applications are suspended (though as disclosed at the developer event, there will be some provision to perform simple tasks in the background), and holding down the back button shows a slide deck of running applications allowing easy switching between them. Live tiles, the rich, dynamic squares of information found on the phone's main screen, will be easier for developers to create, thanks to the aforementioned limited background processing facility, and tiles will be able to deep link inside applications.

The Xbox hub has been substantially reworked, improving its social credentials—for example, you can compare your gamer score with people on your friend list—improving access to installed games, and incorporating the richly animated 3D avatars previously found in the Xbox Live Extras application.

Web

Mango's Web browser is a big leap forward: Microsoft claimed that the browser is not just similar to its Internet Explorer 9 desktop browser, but is in fact the same browser—and as such, boasts both the decent standards support and excellent performance of the desktop browser. The company showed a side-by-side demonstration of the Mango beta, and the latest shipping versions of iOS, Android, and BlackBerry OS when running one of the company's own benchmark applications. Windows Phone was substantially faster than the competition—though whether it retains that performance lead once it actually ships is an open question.

Mango's browser won't support Flash, either.

It was with the Bing application that the company showed the most new, not previously leaked, information. The new Bing application includes two major new features; "Local Scout," and "Quick Cards." Local Scout extends traditional location-based search to include extensive suggestions and information about the current area; for example, it'll tell you about the local farmers' market, tourist attractions, and which restaurants are hot, with the goal being to give Windows Phone users all the insight that a local would have.

Local scout

Bing's maps have been extended to include interior maps; Bing maps won't just guide you to the shopping mall, they'll show you where to go within the mall.

Quick Cards extend the current application's smart, structured results for certain search types. Search for a movie and the phone will tell you where and when you can see it, what it scored in the reviews, who's in it, and more. Search for a venue, and it'll show you all the upcoming events, how to get there, and so on. As shown at MIX, applications will also be able to get in on the action too; the movie search will also let you jump straight into the relevant part of the IMDB application too.

Bing has new icons for Bing Vision, Bing Audio, and Bing Voice, though only Bing Vision was described today

Again confirming rumors, Bing has gained vision, allowing scanning of barcodes, QR codes, and OCR. A demonstration of the feature showed a book's front cover being scanned; after the book was identified, a link from Bing to the Kindle application allowed instant switching into the book's Kindle application page, from where it could then be purchased.

Broader reach

To enable Mango to reach more markets, Microsoft has confirmed that it will include richer language support. For this first time, the platform will include support for complex non-Latin scripts; Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean will all be supported. The company also announced that new hardware vendors would be supporting the platform: Nokia (of course), Acer, Fujitsu, and ZTE will all launch Mango devices, and existing manufacturers Samsung, HTC, and LG would also have new hardware for Mango. Oddly, Dell, which currently makes the Venue Pro, was not listed either as a current or future manufacturer.

Though plenty of new features were shown off, the mood of the event was a little peculiar. Almost everything shown today had either been leaked or shown by Microsoft at previous events. Some leaked features are still yet to be confirmed—including the tantalizing hint of turn-by-turn navigation—but the confirmation of so much that had leaked already lends credence to the as-yet unconfirmed rumors. Instead, the company said that more would be shown off in coming months. Though Microsoft said that it had Nokia devices running Mango in its labs, there was no hardware to play with, whether from Nokia or anyone else.

The company confirmed that Mango would be available to current Windows Phone users, but gave no indication of a release date, other than "fall"—meaning that Mango is still many months away. A throwaway comment was made that there would be greater opportunities for hardware vendors to differentiate their products, but the only differentiating feature described was optional 4G support. Early in Windows Phone's life there was a promise of a cheaper hardware specification with a lower screen resolution; this has fallen by the wayside, but the talk of greater hardware differentiation again raises the specter of new hardware form factors.

The company also wouldn't indicate if the new language support would spill over into new regional support. The experience of using Windows Phone varies greatly from country to country, with some features like speech-to-text currently only available in the US; Bing's local search is similarly inconsistent, with local results in US and UK, for example, but not in New Zealand. Given the desire to give the platform greater global reach, this is clearly something that needs to be remedied—but the company had no comment to make on the matter.

The extent of enterprise policy support also remains unknown.

Mango continues to look like a strong release, one that brings much-needed features and a raft of unique innovations. So far, Windows Phone has failed to ignite consumer interest. Mango certainly has the goods—will Microsoft be able to get it out soon enough to matter?

I watched the live keynote demo and seeing Mango in action was really impressive. The OS seamlessly blends so many features. One can't help but notice how clean it is. The Bing Vision implementation, the Local Scout, the voice commands, the facebook/sms integration--everything is cohesive.

As nice as things are getting, I think app developers are still seeing iOS and Android as the platforms to focus on. MS is going to have to do the majority of the paddling if they want this boat to go anywhere.

There's only so much you can do with a 4x3 slab of plastic with a screen - and apple and google already have a multi-year head start. It was a matter of timing and they were too late. Doesn't matter how good it is now. Maybe simply giving them away for a year would be the only way to get the foothold they need.

"Mango certainly has the goods—will Microsoft be able to get it out soon enough to matter?

I'd argue the former, and the answer to the latter is almost certainly "nope." What are the odds that this is released before iOS 5? 10:1? 100:1? 1000:1?

I've seen one of these phones in use in the real world. One.

On the other hand, Microsoft sold 1.6 million of them in the first quarter of 2011. While nothing to write home about, that's almost 10% of Apple's sales for the quarter, which isn't a bad start for an OS in it's infancy (that's had a lot of teething issues too).

Also, iOS 5 is in internal beta testing now, likely a beta will happen at WWDC and then an update a few months after that for the rest of us. It probably won't hit in June like the past couple of years, maybe giving credence to the idea that iPhone 5 won't be here until September. Which is roughly when Mango will hit. So I'd give it 2:1 odds.

Early in Windows Phone's life there was a promise of a cheaper hardware specification with a lower screen resolution; this has fallen by the wayside, but the talk of greater hardware differentiation again raises the specter of new hardware form factors.

Thank goodness for that! I seriously didn't see the point of a low-res form factor..

What MS has is a nice phone. It does all the smartphone basics really well- it even does some of them better than any other phone. But so what? iPhone is still the slickest, and Android is still the cheapest, and they both do the basics really well, too. AND they both have far more apps. What does MS have?

See how great WinCE 7 will be soon. So please stop buying those stupid iPhones and buy a WinCE device instead. You know we'll eventually make it work OK.

It works great now. The improvements are nice, to be sure, but it's still a great phone now. I've gone through iOS, Android, and BBOS, and WP7 is still my favorite, even with its lesser flexibility and smaller overall feature set.

I really am looking forward to Mango, as is the rest of my company (we all migrated), but it's not stopping us form loving the phones.

Also, if you care about music, the Zune desktop app is the best app for music, period.

On the other hand, Microsoft sold 1.6 million of them in the first quarter of 2011.

I still don't know if that number is phones sold into the channel, or phones sold to actual end users. Microsoft has been extremely cagey when discussing numbers and made no mention of it in their latest earnings report.

I have a Samsung Focus. I love it, but I have no faith in Microsoft. The release window is "Fall", but I don't know if that's "Fall" for carriers or "Fall" for consumers. Microsoft has missed each and every release date for updates as well as Angry Birds. I'm still waiting for the the security update that is nothing but SSL certificates. What could possibly cause a significant delay with that update?

DOES NOT have a QWERTY keyboard (too many buttons on such a small device = I hit buttons I didn't intend to)

DOES NOT have touch screen (I touch them all the time and it always detects the button next to the one I'm trying to press)

I want a brick smartphone with t9. Just with modern features.

Pleaaaaaasssssseeeeeeeeeeeee

No. That's retarded.

I disagree.

I currently have a Dash 3G and it's generally a great form factor. However, WM6 is meh. And that hardware that runs it is woefully inadequate. 100MB ROM? Pfhaha. Comes with a Youtube app preloaded and sometimes I can't open that because there's <6MB free on the ROM to cache with. Without anything extra loaded, and only a couple pictures stored (basically as it is straight out of the box). Lags on text messaging if you have >100-200 stored? You betcha. I'd like it better if it had buttons combined ala the Shadow. I hit s when I meant a all the time. Irritating. I can't tell what button my finger is on, especially in the dark, because my thumb tip covers 6-8 at once.

Internet browsing is such a waste of time. I can't get anything done, it can't scroll properly. I can't type anything because it can't scroll. If I type something longer than the text box, I can't check (see) what I've entered.

May have to do with where you are. Also anecdotal, but Jacksonville has very good t-mobile coverage and I see at least as many HD7s as I do EVOs. I started to key on this at a large public event last week and turned it into sport. Lots of iPhones. Ugh.

edit: I suppose I should elaborate - I think the presence of strong T-mobile availability is important because (imo) the HD7 is the best WP7 handset available and the only other phone I was considering a few months ago (went with MT4G for data speeds and tethering).

There's only so much you can do with a 4x3 slab of plastic with a screen - and apple and google already have a multi-year head start. It was a matter of timing and they were too late. Doesn't matter how good it is now. Maybe simply giving them away for a year would be the only way to get the foothold they need.

replace "apple" and "google" with Nokia and RIM, and this statement sounds awfully familiar...

What MS has is a nice phone. It does all the smartphone basics really well- it even does some of them better than any other phone. But so what? iPhone is still the slickest, and Android is still the cheapest, and they both do the basics really well, too. AND they both have far more apps. What does MS have?

I think wp7 is slicker than iOS. iOS feels 5 years old now. it's ugly, and boring. i'd take wp7 anyday. sure, they've got 500,000 apps for it, but 90% of them are fart apps. who cares?

I'm still waiting for the the security update that is nothing but SSL certificates. What could possibly cause a significant delay with that update?

1) it's not just SSL certificates; Microsoft also slipped some other bits into it. I don't think this was wise, since it means there's now extra stuff to "test".2) The fix is out; AT&T haven't authorized it for 1.3 version Focuses, and 1.4 version Focuses aren't getting any patches at all. Samsung is producing multiple Focus variants to accommodate variable parts availability, and the only bothered to test/validate 1.3.

I think the Focus may also suffer some of the bootloader issues that the Omnia 7 suffers; Samsung shipped some Omnia 7s with a bootloader that can't go into firmware update mode without hardware mods. I love the Focus, but I can't help but have contempt for Samsung's idiocy.

While I do believe you are talking about WP7 phones in general, I will point out I've only seen one other captivate in public. Those have sold many more millions.

I like what WP7 is trying to accomplish. They are looking to be between Google and Apple. It's a strongly integrated os much like apple, but have customization like google. Depending on the new phones, I think I'll be giving WP7 a chance this fall. I always have the 30 days to return it to ATT.

There's only so much you can do with a 4x3 slab of plastic with a screen - and apple and google already have a multi-year head start. It was a matter of timing and they were too late. Doesn't matter how good it is now. Maybe simply giving them away for a year would be the only way to get the foothold they need.

I'm not sure if the game is over, but it looks like it will be a damned hard slog if they do make it.